"Why would there be case lube on a finished round?".
Based on what I read, you don't tumble your competed rounds and so there is probably some case lube left on your ammunition. This is not a problem.
The only justifiable reason to remove case lube from a finished round is if the lubricant attracts dirt. Waxy lubricants dry hard and don't attract dirt. Lubricated cases are easier to extract and thus, are easier on your extractor.
Most shooters are removing case lube from their cases because they were told to do this. They were told by authority figures that greased or oiled cases
"dangerously" increase bolt thrust and create a dangerous condition. The concept that grease or oil on the cartridge creates a dangerous condition is an interesting case of the fallacy of
“argument from authority”. After reviewing all the information I can find , I am of the opinion that this was originally created by the US Army Ordnance Department to hide and misdirect failures from the population of 1 million “low number” M1903’s held in Army inventory. These rifles were made at Army Arsenals and as the designer and manufacturer, any inherent problems with rifle, either in the hands of civilians or Navy and Marine personnel, were the responsibility of the US Army. The Army positively and absolutely deigned there was a problem with their rifles and the earliest in print example of this was in the 1917 Arms and the Man:
Arms and the Man, Brig Gen Fred H. Phillips Jr 8/25/1917
Blown Blots and Split Barrels
Recently there have been reported from rifle clubs several cases where the barrels of Army rifles have burst and where bolts have blown out.
To those who are not familiar with the circumstances attending these accidents-none of which fortunately have cost human life- the mishaps have suggested that possibly the Springfield rifle is an unsafe arm, and that practice with it may be attended by fatalities.
The truth of the matter is that the Springfield is quite as safe as any high powered rifle, and possibly a much more reliable gun than one could expect from a weapon the charge of which exerts 50,000 pounds per square inch pressure in the chamber. The reason why one hears more of “blow-ups’ in the Springfield is that more rifle club members use this arm than use any other one make of commercial weapon, and consequently, in point of number, although not necessarily in point of numbers, although not necessarily in point of percentage, the accidents from the military type rifle may appear greater.
Emphatically the Springfield is not an unsafe gun. As it comes from the arsenal, it can be used year in and year out and so far as the likelihood of accidents is concerned, be as good as ever-but provide that it is properly handled and properly cared for.
If one takes the trouble to inquire into the causes of accidents with the Springfield, it will more than likely result in the conclusion that 99 our of 100 mishaps such as blown bolts and split barrels result either from the use of hand-loads or special loads improperly or carelessly put together in the making, greased chambers, or both.
In short, there nothing the matter with the Springfield as long as it is used for the ammunition for which it was designed, except of course in the very small percentage of cases where a bolt has been over hardened or some similar mechanical defect has crept in during manufacture.
Incidentally, this denial was put in print after the July 1917 shattering of M1903 rifles at ammunition vendors, which eventually caused the production lines at Rock Island Arsenal and Springfield Armory to be shut down during a shooting war:
Hatcher's Notebook 3rd edition , '03 production for the Year 1918 at SA.
Month '03 Production
Jan 1918 ---- 23, 890
Feb 1918 ----- 6,910
Mar 1918 -------- 120
Apr 1918 ------- 2,631
May 1918 ----- 3,420
Jun 1918 ----- 6,140
Jul 1918 ------ 14,841
Aug 1918 --- 27,020
Sep 1918 --- 29,770
Oct 1918 --- 35,920
Nov 1-9 1918 10,600
The Army had real problems with their Arsenals prior to and during World War 1. This was a very embarrassing bunch of problems that affected National Security, and it was something that the Army Ordnance bureau should have been on top of, and fixed, long before American entered WW1. The Army built over 1,000,000 rifles that were so defective that an Army Board in 1927 recommended scrapping all one million because it was impossible to screen the good rifles from the bad.
The Army also wanted competitors to stop greasing their bullets. Bullets of the period fouled something awful. Until you shoot those cupro nickel bullets you have no idea of how bad the fouling. I have, I shot 303 Iraqi and that stuff left huge lumps of fouling in the barrel, and it took weeks to remove the lumps using Sweets. However, dipping the bullets in axle grease positively prevented all bullet fouling. I was very surprised at the effectiveness of greased bullets at preventing jacket fouling. At the time the Army was loaning out rifles to Gun Clubs and to competitors at the National Matches. I am certain that shooters got dirt on their greased bullets, scratching the chambers/barrels of these loaner rifles. It makes sense the Army did not like this. So, prior to the 1921 National Matches, a Council of Colonels ordered Major Townsend Whelen to
“prove the evils of grease”. This is after Major Whelen had convinced the Army, and the world, that he had found the solution which would end cupro nickel fouling: coating the bullet with a thick layer of tin.
Incidentally, Major Whelen’s cure for bullet fouling, was far worse than the disease. It turns out that tin from the bullet, migrated into the brass neck of the cartridge case. The phenomena is called “cold welding”. Extremely heavy bullet pulls were obvious from day one, but the cold welding only increased in time, so the longer this ammunition was around, the more solid the weld between bullet and case. The weld was so strong that case necks were torn off the cases and traveled down the barrel with the bullet. This tin coating created a bore obstruction and that blew up rifles.
Neither Major Whelen, Hatcher, nor the Army admitted that the primary cause of rifle blowups were due to the Army issued Tin Can ammunition. Instead, the Army blamed greased bullets, and in print, the official Army position was that the tin can ammunition was absolutely safe:
1 Oct 1921 Arms and the Man, Editorial by Brig-Gen Fred H. Phillips, Jr, Secretary NRA
The National Match Ammunition
Use of the national Match ammunition through the Camp Perry shooting season has amply demonstrated that, in the hands of intelligent rifleman, the “tin can” cartridge may be regarded as absolutely safe.
The fact that the National Matches closed without recording one serious accident in connection with the use of this ammunition seems to be a final and clinching argument, that when properly handled, no disastrous results may be expect. The only instance of rifles having been damaged-there were two out of the thousand-odd in use that suffered from “blow back”-were cause the presence of grease in excessive quantity and were the result of the shooter’s own carelessness. Fortunately the men who experience the blow backs were only superficially hurt. The lesion, however, in connection with the blow backs was plain.
The high degree of accuracy attained in the manufacture of this ammunition cannot be question. It is without a doubt the finest machine-made product that has ever been turned out.
The high quality of this ammunition, together with the remarkable accuracy properties of the new type of National Match rifle will do a very great deal toward promoting the art of marksmanship. …..
Whether the new “tin can” type ammunition may be regarded as a suitable service load for use by troops in the field is a matter for later an more mature determination. But little more could be expected in accuracy and wind bucking qualities from a strictly machine-made product than that exhibited by this year’s tin-plated ball cartridges.
After the National Matches, Major Townsend Whelen, the “creator” of the Tin Can ammunition was asked whether tin can ammunition was going to be issued in the future, given the months of Army hoopla about its perfection:
Field and Stream July 1922
Modern Rifle Ammunition, by Major Townsend Whelen
The metal of which the jackets are made is a most important item in the making of good bullets. If the jacket metal be too soft, or too brittle, and particularly if it be dirty of contain scale, the bullet will be poor, and it may cause considerable damage to the bore. Until very recently cupro-nickel was almost universally used for bullet jackets for the ultra high velocity rifle cartridges. There are many objections to the use of this metal. It is expensive, and it is hard to obtain it in good quality. It cases metal fouling in the bore. This metal fouling accumulates from shot to shot, gets (text missing) good lot of this metal, and put it aside and guard it most jealously for use in their Palma ammunition, other cartridges on which their reputation for accuracy is at stake. Cupro-nickel is really to be regarded as obsolete for bullet jackets.
In the 1921 ammunition for the National Matches an experiment was made in plating the cupro-nickel jackets of the bullets with a tin coating about 0.0003 inch thick. It is well known that the lubricating effects of tin at high temperatures prevents metal fouling when cupro-nickel jacketed bullets are used. The tin also seems to ease the bullet from the case, through the bullet seat, so as to get it entered in the bore with the minimum deformity. Superb accuracy was obtained with this ammunition and as a result every shooting record was broken last year. This ammunition did not cause lumpy metal fouling. But there was an aftermath to the use of tin-plated bullets which makes it extremely unlikely that such a plating will ever be used again. If you suspend iron in melted tin, the tin will eat away the surface of the iron. Something akin to this occurs very quickly with tin bullets at the temperatures occurring the bore of the rifle. An examination of the bore of the rifles used at the National Matches of last year shows that the surface of the bore, particularly the top of the lands, has been eaten away for a depth of from 0.001 inch to 0.003 inch over quiet ninety per cent of the surface. The other ten per cent of the original surface remains, and this portion stands up like islands above the eaten surface. Viewed from the muzzle, these islands, constituting the original surface, look exactly like heavy flakes or lumps of metal fouling, and this lead many to think that the tin plating was not a prevention of cupro-nickel fouling. The true condition of the bore was only determined by sectionalizing and a careful metallurgical examination.
Do notice that Major Townsend Whelen is absolutely, positively, not admitting that his Tin Can ammunition is dangerous and will, given time, blow up rifles . Nor is he admitting that prior to the National Matches, he ignored all warnings and evidence that something was wrong with his tin can ammunition.
Also at the time, no one outside of a few in the Ordnance Department knew about their structurally defective rifles, even though, three years previous, the Army had conducted a massive investigation, shutting the production lines of their Arsenal down in the middle of a shooting war. That is a very serious thing, shutting down the Army production lines of the Army service rifle in the middle of World War One. The Army's own tests showed that 33 1/3% of those rifles would fail in an over pressure condition. Not a peep of this appears in the literature of the times, and it does not appear until the publication of Hatcher’s Notebook in 1947, forty years after the fact.
Quite literally, the Army did not want to know or have anyone else know, about problems or deficiencies about their weapons. This is was expressed in the August 1922 Infantry Journal:
Infantry Journal 1922
Notes from the Chief of Infantry August 1922 page 196
Courtesy Google Books
News Articles pertaining to Equipment – Arrangements have been made whereby the Infantry Board will review certain classes of (written) articles (for publication) that pertain to Infantry equipment, prior to their publication in the infantry Journal. This applies only to those articles that have a tendency to bring into the Infantryman’s mind a suspicion that the equipment he is supplied with, is not the very best that can be had for him. It can readily be see that the Army that does not its equipment, weapons especially, is equal to, or superior to that of a possible enemy, will suffer to some degree in morale. Inventors and promoters sometimes make statements regarding the superiority of their invention or article that are not always borne out by the tests that they are subjected to and the Infantry Board is in a position to determine the justice of the claims and advise the Editor of the Infantry Journal regarding them.
I will sum up the statement: Army weapons are perfect, they cannot be improved on, anyone expressing different is subversive and disloyal. In my opinion, this was, and still is, the informal and formal policy of the United States Army.
The idea that greased bullets or greased cases creates a dangerous condition would have died decades ago if it had not been in the 1947 book
“ Hatcher’s Notebook” . Hatcher’s Notebook is the ground zero for all the concerns expressed in the American shooting community about greased bullets, oiled bullets, lubricated bullets, lubricated cases, oiled cases. Townsend Whelen is the man actually responsible for creating the data set that the Army and Hatcher used to claim dangerous pressure increases. These men are revered by the American shooting community. Given the statue of Hatcher and Townsend Whelen (recently called “Mr Rifleman” or “the Dean of Riflemen”) within the shooting community, and the decades spanning their unchallenged claims that grease (and/or oil) dangerously raised pressures, it is no wonder that the shooting community is thoroughly indoctrinated with this belief. It is however, fallacious.
The whole idea that the bolt is too weak to carry the full thrust of the case, and that case friction is needed to prevent the action from failing, originated as an Army coverup that is almost 100 years old now. The Army built over 1,000,000 defective M1903’s and came up with this to pass the blame when accidents occurred when Army ammunition was fired in defectively made Army rifles.
There are several things I find amazing about this whole episode. One is that Townsend Whelen made Colonel. When he was a Major, in charge of Frankfort Arsenal, the guy had the resources of an Army Arsenal, and yet, he and his organization failed. If he was a Navy Captain who ran his ship on the rocks he would have been removed from command. He and his organization made and issued dangerous ammunition which blew up rifles. Frankfort Arsenal produced several millions of dollars of ammunition which blew up rifles prior to the National Matches, during the National Matches, and after the National Matches. That ammunition which was left over, the Army scrapped because it was too dangerous to issue. Townsend Whelen ignored all evidence that something was wrong with his ammunition. I have read in the Arms and the Man, well before the National Matches, Townsend Whelen describing cases being ripped in half, and yet, he and his team just ignored the implications. This shows his failure as a manager. His team should have known something was wrong. If they did, his management style was such, he did not want to hear of it, and his team did not dare to breech the subject. (reminds me of Hillary Clinton and her emails!) If his team did not know of the implications, that does not let Townsend Whelen off the hook, as in the end, he was responsible for the overall effort and accountable for the success and failure. He should have gotten the right people to investigate the issues he was aware of and find out if there were going to be problems. We know after the National Matches, the Army leadership had to conduct a public coverup, and that would not have endured the Army leadership to Townsend Whelen. So, all things considered, I am surprised his career in the Army Ordnance Bureau did not end in 1921.
